Summer to fall and back again

Hopefully with the onset of fall, I will have returned from my summer of spotty blogging to a little more regular posting. Now that we've just returned from our annual pilgrimage to the midwest, I guess it's truly time to take down the mental "On vacation" sign and move into the focused and productive cooler months I also so love.


These pictures from the first weekend of September are indicative of what our end of summer/early fall has been like. A morning can start with a winter coat and hot chocolate, and end in a day warm enough for a swim in the river. One moment I'm ready to fire up the oven and bring out the soup pot, the next it's all I can do not to just spend the day in a vegetative state on the couch, hoping to escape the 100 degree temps if I just don't move at all. But I've enjoyed September, with all it's weather oddities, to just appreciate what there is to like about all conditions. We'll see what October brings!

Celebrating ordinariness

I know, I know, you mostly come here for the cute pictures of one little girl right? But I also like to share a little bit of the parenting journey too. As we were biking home from town the other day, an idea clicked in my mind that I'd like share here with you: celebrating ordinariness. My mind has been abuzz with ideas lately as I've been working through a number of books about parenting, family life, education. It's been one of those delightful reading journeys, where one book leads to the next to the next to the next...


Most recently I've been reading a book titled Simplicity Parenting. The author brings out a number of ways we can simplify family life to allow childhood to be just that...childhood. A slow and special time of learning, rather than a rushed crash course to adulthood. One idea that stood out to me was in the section on simplifying the daily schedule. Payne suggests dialing back on the number of scheduled activities, and to think more about just enjoying the everyday, rather than having to fill each day with some new and better form of entertainment or specialized educational experience. This built very nicely on a book I read a couple months ago, Teach Your Own, where the author emphasized how everyday activities could be a wonderful learning opportunity because of their immediate and tangible connection to real life. 


I have tried to take this to heart by thinking in terms of how we can slow down and enjoy the stuff of daily life, rather than just trying to get through the chores and errands in order to get on to something better. How can we enjoy what we are doing right now? On Friday we had a couple errands downtown and so got on the bike after naptime and set off. After one short stop in the fair trade store downtown, I thought, we have the time, why rush right on to our next errand? What to do? We walked right across the street to the park, checked out the fountain, Cassidy ran after some kids and then tried to play patty-cake with the big Lucy (of Peanuts fame) sculpture. I remembered it was "$2 Freddo Friday" (Freddo is an icy tea or coffee drink in various flavors) at Peet's, and not having had a Freddo previously, we walked down the street to give that a try.


Our next stop on the bike was the plant nursery near our house. I was in search of some fun plant for a house-warming gift, and Cassidy was in search of all the little goat/chicken/horse lawn ornaments they have hiding amongst the plants. Cassidy helped me pick out a lovely dark purple butterfly bush, and she "ooo'd" while the salesperson wrapped the pot in paper decorated with butterflies. She then got to hold the tube of wrapping paper and enjoy hearing how her "helloo" was amplified down the length of the tube. We put the plant in our bike pannier and continued home. 


There. Not the most exciting afternoon when it comes to describing it, but as we were on our way home, I realized that I felt totally relaxed. Instead of filling the afternoon with "we need to do this then that, then go here" plus worrying about whether Cassidy was having a good time or getting fussy, I just thought about how we could wrap the whole afternoon into a time of getting things done, but also little moments we could both enjoy. 


I know perhaps not every outing is going to look like this, but it opened my eyes to how good it can feel to slow down and enjoy the ordinary moments of each day. 

Here's a little ordinary moment at home, somewhat recently:

perfect weekend moment

Happy 4th of July!

Cassidy got to experience her first 4th of July fireworks this year! After some trepidation about the late hour, she held her own well into the night (the early morning today is another story, but we won't discuss that...).  It was fun to hear her little cries of "boom!" and "another one!" And funny too to watch while she turned her back on the grand firework finale to play with her glo stick instead :-). Fun to experience another festive first for the little girl.

Swimming and strawberries

Well I've been a bit delinquent in posting this month. Perhaps it was due to the run of good books I had recently, which seemed to take up all my free moments (I'm a bit of a compulsive reader, and once I start into a book I like, I will grab every free moment - however small - to read it), or the various visitors we have, or the beautiful summery weather we've been enjoying...or a combination of all of these things. For now, let's just say a lot of our recent moments together have looked a lot like these photos from a couple weekends ago:

Swimming, summer fruits, long, beautiful days...it doesn't get much better! Hope everyone is enjoying summer time too!

Tiny dancer

Farm Friends

So I'd been meaning to post these pictures for a little while now, along with some accompanying text to let you know just how much this little girl loves her farm animals. For those who have recently enjoyed a video chat, you'll know that a great conversation with the little Miss C can consist of asking "What does the cow say?" "What does the horse say?" etc...She really has quite a good repertoire of animal sounds.


In line with her love of animals, we are always on the lookout for new opportunities to get up close and personal with a few of these farm friends. I've detailed our encounters with baby goats and a miniature pony here before, well on the other end of size spectrum we recently got to visit with some draft horses at a "ploughing playday" nearby. The look of sheer delight on her face when she saw these big animals was enough to make the visit worthwhile.

Horses ready for ploughing

And here comes the horse-drawn wagon